Scarecrow:Red Autumn
by Jan Q
Summary: But the man did scream though, scream, and cry out to all the saints in heaven for his mother like the pathetic frighten worm that he was; old man indeed, and that to Crane was priceless. Epilogue to Poison Ivy:Green Spring. Femslash
1. Chapter 1

Jonathan Crane thinks himself a patient man. He wasn't (isn't) the type of person to allow a simple matter of having to wait in line for a cup of coffee to disturb him, but even a patient man has limits. That's the problem with Gotham, he thinks out loud to himself, as in any other large faceless urban sprawl it was populated by mindless thrugs that mistake manners for weakness.

He just wanted a cup of coffee from his favorite diner; a hole in the wall place dealing mostly in take away conveniently located a block down from Robinson Park where he was headed - just a cup of coffee really, in a paper cup, black, no creamer, no sugar, no trouble, and no fuss. He was about to place his order with Jeanne at the counter (lovely Asian girl works there after school says she's saving for college), when he stopped for a moment to help retrieve a pacifier for the baby the lady waiting in line behind him carrying had dropped on the floor.

Next he knows some Armani wearing upstart with slicked back hair and cell phone fixed firmly to ear bumps him off the queue. He first thought it was a mistake, the man had not seen him in line so he starts off with a polite explanation – "Excuse me, I was here first." – But he finds himself speaking into empty space as the man pointedly ignores him and continues yakking even louder into the cell phone. He tries again and this time the man gets off the phone and shouts at him vulgarly in public – "Shut your trap up old man, can't you see I'm on the God Dammed phone."

I suppose, Crane thinks, that was the provincial straw that broke the camel's back, to be called an old man. The man in his flashy designer suit had assumed due to the way he spoke and dressed that he was mild manned and easily cowed, a banker, or an accountant perhaps. Taking the look of Crane in one glance and writing him off as nothing more dangerous than a professional paper pusher. How trite.

The man never saw the hand coming up hard and fast, the long boney fingers going for the eyes. Crane quietly shakes his head as he looks at his grime stained gloves, a new pair of the softest leather ruined and he won't ever be able to visit the diner again not after losing his temper in front of all those people. His pride wouldn't let him. Crane thought it unbecoming to even raise his voice in public. It was a shame really it was so difficult to find a place in Gotham that did a roast beef sandwich properly, one that came with a choice of seeded or plain Italian bread, topped with fresh mozzarella, fried eggplant, and au jus. But the man did scream though, scream, and cry out to all the saints in heaven for his mother like the pathetic frighten worm that he was; old man indeed, and that to Crane was priceless.

Crane pulls his wool overcoat tighter as he settles down on one of the wrought iron benches that dot the landscape of Robinson Park. He's arranged to meet an old friend here, and he expects to have to wait a while. Crane believes it is a woman's prerogative to be fashionably late.

Robinson Park is quiet this time of the year except for a few die hard joggers, those that run in all seasons come hail and high water for their adrenaline fix. Crane decides he rather likes it, this peace and quiet after the hustle and bustle of summer. It was early spring 2 years back that they pulled the first body out of the lake that sits in the heart of Robinson Park. A little girl no more than nine her limp black hair still tied up in little pigtails. They caught him eventually of course; Batwoman with help from an unexpected quarter. The Gotham PD was as expected too embroiled in their petty office politics to be of any use in the matter.

Crane stands and smiles as he spies her coming, he has not seen her for 2 years since their time together in Cancun with Victor Fries. She looks radiantly wonderful like a breath of fresh air although inappropriately dressed for the chilly weather in a floral dress and stiletto heels, her golden sheared mink coat left carelessly open. He remembers to take off his soiled glove before extending his hand as he calls out a familiar greeting to her - "Dr Isley, how nice to see you again."

Crane is well acquainted with the gossip in the underground; he understands that Pamela Isley has since her salad days with him and Victor Fries on the lam acquired a protector. Person or persons unknown as the case may be with the political clout to weed out any obstacles to her safe discreet return to Gotham after they had left Arkham together in less than favorable circumstances, and the money to keep her very comfortably in furs and Manolo Blahnik heels. Whoever her protector was, Crane remarks dryly to himself, Isley has learned admirably not to bite the hand that feeds her. Gone was the feral wild child-woman persona, in its place a keen eye and firm hand had lovingly pruned and shaped until the result was as exquisite as bonsai.

Pamela Isley was depending on whom you chose to believe either a monster or merely misunderstood. Crane believed the truth was somewhere in between, like one cursed by the Gods Isley's capacity to do great things was dwarf only by her caprice and insolent indifference. Crane always found it personally ironical that an individual with the talent to feed an entire city the size of Gotham from 30 odd blocks of neglected parkland, had no other ambition other than tending to a hideous poisonous rose, engaging in adolescent acts of corporate sabotage and snuggling up with other women. Unlike the others, Crane had never found tales of Isley's alleged homosexuality titillating.

"Professor Crane, how nice to see you again too" – Isley replies as she shakes his hand warmly. She smells wonderful, Crane thinks, of citrus and warm summer afternoons and new leather bound books. He notices despite himself that she is not wearing anything under her dress, her taut breasts hard in the cold forming stiff peaks in the soft material. He is well aware of the effect Pamela Isley has on members of his sex as well as certain members of her own.

It's an old trick of nature; plants do it all the time. The pitcher plant endemic in Asia emits a sweet smell which mimics that of nectar to draw its prey, so why shouldn't Pamela Isley, Crane reasons as he allows himself momentarily to enjoy the high of being in the company of a beautiful desirable woman. After all, as his father was often heard to say, we all have to eat; it was as they say a dog eating dog world. Strange how smells have the ability to invoke long forgotten memories; Crane hadn't thought about his father in years.

Ever conscious of expected social niceties Crane tells Isley how wonderful she looks, how she has blossomed on her return to Gotham as they settle down comfortably next to each other on the park bench. A passing jogger may easily have mistake them to be father and daughter having a serious quiet discussion, perhaps talking about the father's objections to a young but not eligible man the woman was seeing. Their heads bent close together almost intimately.

Isley smiles, nods and returns him the compliment. She knows that Crane will in due course ask about the unfortunate young man whose arm was broken. The young man was nothing more than a street punk of course, one of the many that hung out all hours of the day in the park sniffing glue and drinking firewater out of paper bags. His name was Carl, and like all lost children who claim sanctuary from the streets of Gotham, he belonged to her.

In all fairness, Crane had not wanted any trouble, just some information on the best way to get in touch with an old friend. He had ever offered to pay but like today at the diner, some people just don't understand that men of a certain vintage don't take kindly to being abused with foul language much less threatened with a switchblade.

Crane didn't need to break the boy's arm of course or do the other things he did, but someone had to impress on the petty playground tyrant the true meaning of fear and loathing and like any good teacher Crane took that burden upon himself. Crane knew that Isley would not be too put out by what he felt he had to do. Granted she has this past 2 years made significant strides in her dress sense and personal hygiene; no longer going round clad in a silly tunic of leaves or bathing out in the open in the fetid waters of the lake, but he could see that there was still a deep vein of misandry running through the core of her. Unlike an arm or a leg, some things you can never prune or trim away.

Despite his delight in being given an opportunity to clear the air about that misunderstanding, his visit today is not social, but business. "I have news that may be of interest to you." - He starts and when he finishes Isley is no longer smiling. The reaction was not unexpected but then distasteful news of this nature never elicits a positive response, Crane might as well have told Isley that Harleen Quinzel was waiting for her in bed at home eager for them to kiss and make out.

Crane often marvels about the synchronicity of events that lead from Robinson Park to Arkham and back now again to Robinson Park, whose dark roots stretch back, even further to before he became the entity which calls itself Scarecrow and she reborn screaming back into the world as Poison Ivy. It was as Jervis Tetch would have said "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."

He puts in all down to the period of madness called the Cold War, where the Great Russian Bear was the symbol of all that was wrong and evil. In hindsight, with what was to come after, the Cold War could be looked upon with nostalgia as a time when the enemy was at least known; an external threat that had no bearing in towns and cities where children played in the streets unmolested and people called out to each other through open doors and windows as they went about their business. Now the enemy dwells within under the guise of neighbors, colleagues, and sometimes even friends. Children die alone and forgotten in the streets and no one calls out anymore because no one listens.

He remembers the day when they first walked into his office; he could never forgot it even if he wanted to so seared it was into the fabric of his memory along with the abandonment of his mother's death, the triumph of graduating magna cum laude and the modification of first teaching position.

They were two men in dark glasses neatly dressed in identical dark suits; the provincial men in black. They came to him because he was the best and they offered him the unique opportunity to actualize his research into physical reality. Crane was then a Distinguished Chair, having fought his way tooth and nail up the academic ladder. He had nothing to recommend him, no long standing family connections, no powerful backers, nothing but a gut-churning fear fueled by the deprivation and humiliation of a dirt poor childhood. Perhaps that was his problem, his acute hunger and need to prove himself over and over again.

He soon discovers that he has become part of a top secret military initiative to recruit the finest minds to work on projects of national importance, but in reality to develop new and terrifying chemical and biological tools that may be applied to high density urban warfare. His fear toxin was the love child of one such project. He has never told Isley before but he met Jason Woodrue once under professional circumstances. Woodrue had been recruited to head a concurrent project in Seattle to develop and test anti-venom that would have permitted shock troops to operate in contaminated environments. It was the same year Isley applied to work under Woodrue for her dissertation.

He doesn't know when it all started to go sour, when his backers decided that he had crossed the line from asset into liability. He had justified to them the necessity of using live human subjects to test the toxin, and they agreed, giving him unlimited access to scores of young raw recruits. Fit, muscular young men by the dozen for Professor Crane.

But fear you see is a strange creature it lingers in the back of your eyes in the small of your brain until it catches fire and if you add an accelerant it quickly becomes a wildfire consuming everything in its path. The suicides started slowly, one or two men out of each batch. At first they put it down as a statistical normalcy, it was to be expected that one or two of the participants out of each batch of volunteers would have existing underlying psychological problems that would have been exacerbated by the toxin. But then the numbers started snowballing, as young physically fit young men with no previous mental health issues started throwing themselves like lemmings under trains, hurling themselves like wingless birds out of open windows and acquiring a taste for eating hot steel. The toxin was a great success, but what use was a toxin that had no antidote? So the powers-that-be started looking north towards Seattle for an answer.

Isley frowns – "Have you seen the recording?" Crane pauses a moment to correctly frame his response before replying in a kindly voice – "They released a trailer intended for interested buyers, and I've seen it. It appears genuine."

"Describe what you're seen to me." – Isley asks her voice strangely calm and collected. She's not surprised, Crane notes, that Woodrue made a recording so she has no illusions about what kind of a sick bastard he was. "Of course you're in it, strapped upright into some metal frame. You are unclothed and barely conscious. You are bleeding through needle tracks in your arms and neck. There are bruises on your face; welts on your body. Woodrue is standing next to you speaking to the camera. He laughs and kisses you good bye on your forehead before snapping your neck. I can only sumise by the way your head is left hanging that he broke it."

They are silent for a while, as Crane gives Isley time to digest what he has just told her.

Pamela Isley was once considered along with Alex Holland and Phil Silverman one of Jason Woodrue's enfant terrible. They were lauded as wizards, nothing was sacred to them and their science; they were young and drunk on their own power to destroy and remake the world in their own images. In the end, the choices they made destroyed each and every one of them.

Isley was the first. She was engaged in a clandestine affair with Jason Woodrue, and when she proved to be over demanding he turned on her. His masters were demanding anti-venom that could counter the effects of Crane's fear toxin, and in Isley he found the perfectly pliant guinea pig. No one knows what he did to her or for how long. She simply disappeared one day. Her parents were deceased and her boy friend didn't care enough to ask. It was Silverman who eventually reported her missing. He was the kindest of the three, and the one left most unscathed by his contact with Jason Woodrue. Years later after Isley had surrendered to her madness and Holland lost himself to the Green; Silverman would find himself walking down the same old familiar path that Woodrue once took, synchronicity would see him serving the interests of men not unlike those of his teacher, but unlike Woodrue they would find him and kill him in the end.

Isley was eventually found wandering naked and amnesic in a construction site off a wooded area, there was speculation that she was buried unconscious but alive by her captor(s) in a shallow grave and left for dead. But Crane knows that Woodrue would have made sure Isley was dead before disposing of her. Woodrue was neither careless nor stupid. But you can't kill a plant by snapping off its top.

Isley spent time in and out of hospitals medical and mental before returning to school, but by then Woodrue had disappeared; resigned his position and moved East with his research. Woodrue's backers never got their promised anti-venom and that made their investment in Jonathan Crane worthless. If Crane was ever to trace the interlocking lines of synchronicity, he would come to realize that Woodrue's failure to deliver was the defining moment when it all started souring. What use was a toxin with no antidote? None and Crane passed from being an asset to a liability.

"What is your interest in this?" – Crane looks up to find Isley looking straight at him with those curious green eyes of hers. He cannot tell with any certainty what she is thinking or feeling. She is neither plant nor animal, and Crane suspects that she may no longer be capable of the full range of human emotions. Rage definitely, desire positively but jealousy, fidelity and love? He doubts if Isley herself knows or cares.

"They have your recording and some of my research. Notebooks from a long time back." – Crane answers – " I want my research back and I believe that you would want what is yours back too. I thought we might cooperate."

*** Please leave a review. To be Continued


	2. Chapter 2

Pamela Isley knows she is late when she enters the room, the appointment with Crane had taken more time than anticipated and an apology would now be in order, knowing them it would be an unspoken understanding that today of all days she is expected to be at least on time. It is Ms Gordon's first public exhibition of her photographic work, and therefore considered in their sense important.

Pamela hates gatherings like these; hates the meaningless small talk that these creatures hurled endlessly back and fro at each other as a form of social grooming. Monkeys did it all the time, and these creatures were just an evolutionary step below apes. Pamela sometimes found it difficult to understand how she could conceivably belong to the same species as them.

The small gallery – just 4 interconnected rooms with polished wooden floors and stark white washed walls lit up with bare bulbs - is unsurprisingly packed with well wishers. There are benefits to be had as the Commissioner's daughter, what Barbara Gordon could no longer do on her own strength due to the limitations of that pitiful body of hers she now did through sheer force of will through her extended network of carefully cultivated contacts.

Pamela picks up from the stares and whispers she attracts as she moves through the crowd that she is inappropriate dressed again. She does not remember if the invitation stated that it was to be formal, but most of the men are dressed in black tie and the women decked out in finery like flowers of cloth. Someone makes a joke and there is a general murmur of casual laughter. She looks around but does not recognize any of the faces in the milling crowd.

A man approaches her, offering to get her a drink and tries to engage her in conversation, she looks at him not understanding what he wants, he is asking her if she is alone. She turns away and makes to leave, but he follows not willing to let his beautiful prey escape. Her rejection of this unknown admirer attracts more unwanted attention and soon she is besieged at every side by men. They keep asking if she is looking for someone, if they can help her and it is all she can do to keep herself from wanting to lash out at them.

She is saved when the tall dark woman spots her and intervenes, sending the men quickly packing. Pamela notices that she is dressed in a severely tailored men's suit - pants, jacket and waistcoat - for today's occasion and the clothes fit the length and breadth of her well. The tall woman seems amused at the turn of events of having to save Poison Ivy from unwanted male attention. Grateful Pamela quietly leans over and kisses her on the cheek, and Huntress blushes at the intimate contact.

Gently ushered into a private corner of the gallery, Pamela sees the other two women - the blonde woman in the wheelchair with the blue eyes and standing behind her hovering protectively the other blonde the one who calls out to the tall one - "See you finally found her." Pamela smiles sweetly at the Black Canary in passing before apologizing to the Oracle for missing the opening of her show.

Oracle graciously tells Pamela that she is just glad that she could make opening night, her blue eyes penetrating in their intensity. They had known such other well a long time ago in another life as Poison Ivy and Batgirl, before the time and tide of events overtook them both.

Pamela would not have believed it otherwise but it was Oracle who stepped in when the Batman stood in the way of her return to Gotham, when his stubborn refusal to compromise threatened to tear apart the fragile web of alliances Oracle had so carefully stitched together. Only Oracle had the force of character to oppose the man who now wore the cowl, she had always been stronger than him even when they were children playing heroes. He relented in the end to keep the peace between them but extracted conditions which bound Oracle to Pamela Isley, and which in turn bounded Huntress and the Black Canary to her.

Pamela notes Huntress in the background telling Black Canary she had to beat the men off to get Pamela across the room and Black Canary remarks within Pamela's earshot that someone has to stop indulging the girl and get the girl to start wearing underwear. Pamela ignores the comment and wanders to a nearby exhibit; it is a black and white of children playing in Robinson Park. Pamela remembers when it was taken. I was there today she reminds herself.

A passing waiter hands her a drink, and while she sips it Pamela feels like she's a thousand miles away from everything that matters. She thinks I am dreaming this, I am Poison Ivy and I am dreaming that I am sipping champagne in an art gallery somewhere in Soho with Oracle, Huntress and the Black Canary, and when I wake I will find myself home in Robinson Park overlooking the canopy of the trees. That was after all the only logical explanation.

She has not seen Jonathan Crane in over 2 years, not since Cancun and now he comes to her with this news that one of Jason's tapes has surfaced in Gotham. She had thought that she had tracked down and destroyed all of them over the years, but it was probable that he made copies. Jason was always very proud of what he did.

She had been quiet for a long while after he had broached the subject of their proposed partnership. Crane believed that she was simply bewildered by his news, that after so many years the recording of her final hours if not days had finally surfaced and she would be able to know for certain and reconcile herself to what her lover had done to her. It did not cross his mind that Isley – so much like a woman, mused Crane - was coldly calculating her options in the matter, and that the end result was that she did not chose to do anything. She told him that she had no interest in the recording, it was all in the past, and she did not dwell there anymore.

She had not said – "Not like him." She did not directly allude to him but he had heard it gently implied in her quiet tone. There were too many lost years for her, having the recording and Woodrue come back into her life again was not an option. It would have opened up too many unanswered questions. She did not want to upset the house of cards she lived in now, caught between what she was and what she hoped to be.

She had not been surprised by his proposition to cooperate. It was not too difficult to understand what motivated Crane. Harley Quin had read Crane's personal file out to her one day in Arkham for want of anything else better to do, explaining the technical terms about his psychosis in detail. It was funny how Crane might have done the same with her. Arkham taught them that the basis of any friendship was a strong bond of trust and access to your contemporaries' secret files.

They had ruined him, made him out to be a fake – a nothing – a joke among his peers, sending him into a tailspin that ended in a stone cell in Arkham with feces smeared walls. He wants to take back piece by piece what they took from him; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Crane in the end was nothing more than his father's son; a white trash preacher man crying out brimstone and hellfire only Crane didn't believe in the redemption of forgiveness only that blood from Christian and heathen alike sprouted red.

After all the only thing we need to fear is fear itself.

There was a police report in his file. He had been arrested once for being drunk and disorderly. He had accosted a young couple at their home and accused them of breaking in and taking over his house. He ended up in a urine stained lock-up in the Gotham PD with 3 other men, and it was there that it happened. Gotham's finest ignored his screams of course. He had become a stain, a sore on the good name of the community. One could always trust the Gotham PD to shit on a suspect's rights. They left him there with those men for 3 days, but if they thought he would die in that forsaken cell as some crack head's bitch they were wrong.

She smiles to herself at the thought and then she hears that voice she knows so well call out her name, never Ivy but Pamela. She feels those familiar arms wind themselves around her waist, turning her round and pulling her close. She looks into those smiling dark eyes so full of life and as they kiss she wonders if she is still dreaming.

***

Crane is standing at the window looking out at the sunset as he slowly sips his second cup of coffee. He's taken nothing in today but that strong black elixir, and given nothing back to the world but a stomach full of bile. The apartment that he will stay tonight belongs to an abandon residential complex overlooking the docks. The area was once slated for condominiums until the developer filed for bankruptcy leaving its stable of properties to slowly weather away. The grayness of the walls and the feeling of emptiness as the sounds of footsteps and laughter echo off from the back streets into the dark corridors appeal to him, reflecting in a very apt way how he has been feeling inside since the night Oswald called.

Mulling over the events of the afternoon, Crane admits to himself that one might say that today was really not his day at all. First the hopeful piece of news that after years of searching, hunting and looking he may have finally found them. The fabled them, the men who ruined him.

A set of his long forgotten notebooks had surfaced, detailing some of his early work for The Company – as they called themselves then. An interested seller had approached Oswald Cobblepot, and Cobblepot not being a fool had promptly contacted Crane after verifying that the consignment was indeed genuine. Cobblepot was a businessman, and his line of business relied on him being on better terms with his fellow rouges than his competitors, but still this apparent act of public service surprises Crane. He and Oswald were hardly friends.

A better piece of news was that there was an optical disk among the wares that this interested seller was pimping. A recording staring an old friend. Cobblepot had showed him the trailer, and as they watch it in silence Crane notices Cobblepot wincing slightly almost in passing. He knows, Crane thought, he knows how it feels to be beaten and raped, and this uncommon affinity with Isley disturbs him. Crane is not at all surprised if this sordid truism dredged up from the murky depths of Cobblepot's psyche is what really prompted the unexpected call. After all, like all of them something must have happened to Cobblepot once to push him off the edge where he has been every since. Oswald never made it as low as Arkham but low really is a relative term.

Take for example, what they did to him. They didn't have to do him in, he would never have told on them. Cross his heart and hope to die. But they didn't trust him, didn't trust anything and anyone who wasn't dead and buried 6 feet under. Dead men tell no tales, but that's a lie.

There was a girl, a young woman really on this teaching staff. He supposed that she had a crush on him, an older gentlemen and a young but unattractive woman flattered by his attentions to her, it happens all the time. There was some indiscretions on his part, Crane admits but they were both adults and it was consensual. He wasn't some child rapist like Tetch. It was simply a mistake on the part of a lonely man, and when he tried to explain she had been accepting at first but then they got to her. They had him arrested for first degree rape and sodomy in front of his students and hauled him like a crazed animal in handcuffs pass his peers.

The charges were later dropped but they had only started toying with him. Later came allegations of plagiarism that he had stolen his research off his PhD students. A former employee of questionable repute, testified to the ethics committee that Crane routinely and systematically falsified his test results but most damming were the hurtful personal accusations about his sexuality from long time colleagues and people he had come to view as friends that he had sexually harassed both male and female members of staff. They destroyed his academic career, no other university or collage on the planet would touch him after that, much less accept him as a member of their teaching or research staff.

He retired to private practice, sinking his limited funds into a small clinic in a chic neighborhood with an exclusive clientele but that avenue was soon cut off to him too. They had him struck off the medical rolls on a charge that he over prescribed addictive opiates to patients after 3 of them were found dead of suspected drug over doses. He remembers thinking at the inquiry that they didn't really have to do that; kill his patients to get at him. He had liked life in private practice, so unlike the stuffy passive aggressive environment of academia. He enjoyed the intense interactions with his patients, and the contrast of lazy afternoons when he had no appointments spent in the company of his staff; people who stood by him once but were now strangers that could no longer look him in the face.

After all these years, Crane slowly shakes his head he had thought Isley would have been grateful for the offer to grasp this sudden unexpected chance to get back what they had taken from the both of them.

But he had not prepared himself properly, he had been so overwhelmed by this windfall that he had misjudged Isley's interest and as a result his approach had been too crude and direct. He could understand her position, what was done was done and not one of them could go back and unmake the wrongs, but he wished that it was that easy for him as it was for her to discard the past, but they were the ones that couldn't leave well alone.

Crane was in rocky financial ground, he had invested a substantial amount of his assets into setting up his clinic only to have his name hauled through the mud yet again. Fortunately he had his own house and prudently made some investments over the years that would have been sufficient to see him through but they weren't finished with him yet.

He goes out for a walk one day, just a walk to while away the time and clear his head but he makes a mistake. He stops to tell a stranger the time. He remembers the flash of steel as the knife enters him gutting him like a fish, but not the pain.

He awakes much later stitched up in a homeless shelter with no identification and someone else's clothes. They tell him he was found dumped in front of the hospital barely alive, an intern going out for a smoke had literally stumbled over him. They ask him if he knows who he is and he tells them and they tell him he cannot be Jonathan Crane, Jonathan Crane is dead and buried; victim of a hit and run.

He's bewildered by their insistence that he cannot be who he says he is and breaks out hoping against hope to find someone who can tell him that he is who he says he is and that everything so far is a misunderstanding. He runs back home but there are strangers living in his house; a young couple with a baby and when he demands that they tell him what they are doing in his home and what they have done with his mother's furniture and his books, the man punches him in the mouth and holds him down until the police come. They locked him in a cell with 3 other men for 3 days. 3 days, 3 ways. He doesn't know if they intended it to happen or it happen because of the way he looked – lost and helpless - but the specifics don't matter to Crane because they cheapen what happened to him in the end.

He should have known, he should have factored in the change after all it was all there in the psychological profiles that he complied on her stacked neatly on the large wooden table in the center of his living room. It was the small changes that attracted his attention at first, changes that could not have come about without intense professional intervention and a strong support network. Resources which Isley previously never had or wanted.

She referring to herself in the first person as Pamela and in the second person as Ivy, as if consciously willing herself into separate and distinct identities. Then the more conspicuous changes in dress and manner as if to discard the Ivy personality and the symbolic move to a handsome turn of the century town house facing the Park. Poison Ivy was Robinson Park, but Pamela Isley was Park Avenue. Pamela Isley had either come back with a vengeance or more likely thought Crane someone had dressed Poison Ivy in a dead woman's skin.

He wondered how she could have funded her transformation going from literally sleeping in the raw to a lifestyle that even he could not hope to attain unless he focused his energies 24/7 on grand larceny. The word in the underground was that Isley had given up on her physical activities to focus on the more lucrative area of money laundering - washing funds intended for eco-terrorist organizations blacklisted by world governments and channeling such funds to individuals in enforcement agencies and lobby groups with certain vested interests - supplemented by some black market trading in rare and exotic plant toxins. Activities which her mysterious benefactor(s) appeared to have turned a blind eye.

But this sudden flush of cash did not explain the motivation for the change, the money merely facilitated it. Change fascinated Crane, what could be more miraculous than the moment when a caterpillar emerges from its tomb transformed?

What could have caused Poison Ivy to want to come down from her darling trees? A sudden awareness of herself being more human than plant? Triggered perhaps by physical intimacy with someone she had form a rare unheard of emotional bond? Did Pamela Isley really have a mysterious lover? How the plot thickens.

The question then remains, Crane remarked to no one but himself, whether it was truly love - not merely lust - and if so how the beloved might react to news that someone was hawking an intimate recording of Pamela Isley being physically and sexually assaulted to the highest bidder. And that Crane concluded with some satisfaction would be very interesting to observe if the mystery lover really was who the smart money said she would be.

*** Please leave a review. To be Continued

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* Release Notes  
080210 - Corrected spelling of "Copperpot" to "Cobblepot"


	3. Chapter 3

"Why is one of the windows dead?" – The tall woman asks as she enters the room. The blonde woman, the one in the wheelchair is not at the console and in her place the other blonde sits, and stares as the machines monitor the life of the city each heart beat captured in a multitude of windows arranged across a screen that stretches ceiling to floor, wall to wall.

"Do you really need to ask?' – The blonde replies as she takes the proffered cup the Huntress holds out to her; coffee black with sugar.

"Oh" – The tall woman remarks with an air of embarrassment – "They're doing it again."

"Like fucking rabbits." – The Black Canary replies quietly as she cradles her cup with both hands and takes a long slow sip allowing the warmth of the black liquid to flow and wash over her like a caffeine after glow – "Isley is overly sexualized; it's in her psychological profile."

"You know that's an unfair statement," – The blonde tells herself – "You know _who's_ the one who can't keep her God Dammed hands to herself, the one who keeps touching, kissing, pulling Isley to her and so does she. You're not deaf, dumb, or blind, not by a long shot. You just pretend to be." But Black Canary knows there are things in life better left unsaid, things that you know but don't say anything about because it's too close to home and those glaring flaws you see might just turn out to be you're own, or someone closest to you.

She shakes the thought out of her head and slowly looks round the small confined space pegged at every angle by steep vertical metal brackets and overhanging cables of plastic, rubber, and silicone folded and fused into, onto and over an artillery of unmarked black boxes. She wonders how Barbara can spend days and nights alone but for the company of her computers while she and the Huntress survey the city from rooftops their hair blowing in the wind. She finds the room too sterile for her liking, the temperature turned down low to accommodate the racks of blinking servers that eat up all the light and space. Quiet except for that low persistent humming that comes from machines; lifeless, soulless, dead things.

Like her, Huntress is restless tonight, as she is every night when she's not outside doing something, anything but sit in this dark contained space watching snapshots of life flashing across a giant computer screen like the ruminants of a bad science fiction movie from the 80s. She thinks there is something very wrong in all this - "I hate this room and she hates it as much as me, but she is Barbara Gordon's best friend and she cannot, does not want to say anything to rock that friendship."

"They know that Babs......that we watch them…." – She starts but doesn't finish her sentence.

She's covered all the required reading; Isley is evaluated on a weekly basis by 3 doctors with enough degrees between them to wall paper a house and none of whom could agree on anything other than what everyone already knew. Isley was a plant based organism with deep seated psychopathic tendencies; a killer Mrs. Potato Head. But Mrs. Potato Head never looked across a room full of people and smiled at Mr. Potato Head in a way so piercingly intimate that only another woman would know. Maybe she did and maybe she and Mr. Potato Head also had wild crazy potato sex involving a pat of butter but that's really not the point, the sex was not the point not that she would ever admit it.

There was something about seeing the two of them together that made her uneasy, naked somehow and knowing that they knew and didn't care only made it worse. It made her feel dirty.

She feels awkward having to put into words the turmoil she feels across to another person but hey they were the good guys right, only sometimes it didn't feel that way - "Watching them, the two of them together like that and knowing that they know that we're watching creeps me out."

"Yes." – The Black Canary replies her eyes never leaving the windows. – "They know and it is creepy."

"You feel it and I feel it," - She thinks – "But why doesn't Barbara feel it? Why does she choose to stay in this cold dead room and watch them – the volume turned down low - tear at each other like angry animals, like it was just some laughably bad porno movie on the late night broadcast?" She knows the answer before it hits her and it makes her angry and then later when she is alone painfully sad – "Because this is how you go on when you can no longer survey Gotham from rooftops with the wind blowing in your hair because some green haired lunatic shot you in the spine, and this is how you go on when the man you love is nothing but a slut who sleeps around with your friends because he cannot come to terms with the fact that you are now stuck in a wheelchair for life. You hide yourself in a small dark room and you grind up the scraps from someone else's stupid fucked up life and snort it up your nose for the bleeding high."

"What's creepy?" – The women turn and as Oracle wheels herself carefully over to the console, the Black Canary brings the window back up centering it large on the wall, and all three of them watch silently as it flickers back to life.

***

Pamela Isley wantonly blows a kiss to the electronic eye as it suddenly locks onto her position in a room filled from beginning to end with a mosaic of plants; creepers, shrubs, herbs, climbers of every possible hue and variety exploding in a riot of wild geometric patterns. As she makes her way slowly across this strange lush tropical landscape, naked and covered in a fine sheen of sweat, she is unaware of how terrifying her post coitus beauty translates across the digital divide, but then their voyeurism has never disturbed her. Arkham taught her that much.

Pamela stops to look at the figure sleeping soundly in the large bed set in the far corner of the room, almost hidden behind an over flowing wall of brilliant orchids deep red and white, and smiles. "It is strange," - She thinks – "How easy desire comes to her. How easy it is to reach out; to touch, to caress a breast, a thigh, to steal a kiss, and soon to feel her body pressed hard against mine, her breathing ragged and heavy and know that she intends to push me tight against her until we collapse together in a melted pool of heat."

Much as she likes the act of pleasure given freely and freely received, not bought or bargained or tied up with thorns of guilt like it was with Harley, Pamela likes the physical intimacy far more than she cares to admit. This easiness between their bodies, as they lay locked into each other in an afterglow of desire, relaxed unhurried secure in certain knowledge; a creature separate and distinct from the urgency of their coupling gone by. She likes less the host of conflicted emotions – jealousy, affinity, despair, and hope - that these encounters bring; emotions intense and alien, and yet strangely familiar.

Emotions she does not want to acknowledge, because she knows they are the feelings of a woman in love, but she is not some young delicate wall flower swooning over the pains of first love, she is Poison Ivy. She has seen love, and known it intimately, truly, madly, deeply. Love destroys; it is pain and hurt and betrayal and death and she wants no part of it like she wants no part of Crane's new enterprise.

Fear is the long dark shadow that Love casts as it makes its way through the world. You cannot lose yourself in fear if you do not love and you cannot hope to redeem yourself through love if you do not fear. It is an endless tea party seated between Crane and Harley, and Pamela has spent enough time in the company of both to know that it all ends in a padded cell in Arkham.

Lost in the darkening jungle of her thoughts, Pamela moves silently between the plants which cover the interior of her living quarters on the top floor of the house. They are a necessity to her, as much as water and sunlight and food. She would not have been able to thrive in this dead structure of mortar and stone so reminiscent of that other dead barren place, without the benefit of their company; much needed life and light they bring with them. She pauses frequently to gently stroke a leaf, a branch, a tendril, or murmur a word of praise as they reach out to her, eager for attention. She has been neglectful, she muses, too caught up in the increasingly meaningless activities of her new life.

Pamela feels the inertia of time keenly as it passes the restless and the frustration of having to keep herself constantly in check. She knows she needs to turn away while she still can, leave and return to the Park where she belongs, where she's wanted and needed and free. But she finds herself lingering in the sunny rooms of this house with its menagerie of wondrous plants, laughing in the tangle of limbs and bed linen and morning showers and meals not eaten alone.

"What do I want from this woman who shares my bed?" – She whispers to her beloved, the wild thorny rose who bends its heads forward as if to listen – "Our bed she tells me openly and unashamed. She makes me want her, like Harley but she is not Harley. She is anything but Harley. She thinks she loves me but she does not know me like you know me."

The rose does not answer, but merely reaches out to touch her face gently like a lover. Its thorns brushing lightly against her skin.

Pamela stirs herself at the sound of soft foot steps on the bare wooden floors; she is standing in the shadows that frame the room wrapped in a heavy robe watching silently with eyes tired and heavy with slumber. She does this often Pamela notes, awakes from a seemingly deep sleep to stand and watch in the dark – "She is waiting for me to go back to her, to the comfort of her arms and her bed. She does not understand that I am Poison Ivy and I am my own person."

She hears the soft murmur of a voice, calling out to her; always Pamela, never Ivy. It is chilling in its seductiveness like a siren's call, full of broken promises and dead dreams, faded hopes and wants. Pamela feels it wrap around her like an ill fitted skin that cuts and chaffs trapping her in its thrall.

She makes to move away, to escape but like so many times before she finds herself reaching out, quietly aching for the feel of skin, and flesh and bone against her own, unconsciously drawn like a plant to light and warmth, and the possibility of life.

***

It's a simple plan and simple enough to do.

Crane walks into a small rather unassuming gallery one day and expresses with his usual charm and wit a keen interest in purchasing a photographic print from an unknown photographer they are featuring. It is a black and white of children playing in Robinson Park and Crane personally thinks it is one of the most beautifully shot photographs he has ever seen.

He gets the photographer's email from the proprietor (wonderful chatty man, lost his partner of many years to lung cancer a few years back and would have followed him too but for the grace and support of loved ones. Depression is such a bitch) along with an offer to drop by a party the man is hosting later in the week for some friends; a few mature, attractive, lonely men friends he feels Crane should meet because he is just up their alley. Charming intelligent men of a certain vintage are so rare these days.

The photographer is a woman. She is brilliant of course with such a good eye for light, Crane is told but sadly a paraplegic, the unfortunate victim of a violent home invasion when she was only in her early 20s. Such a shame.

Crane agrees that crime in Gotham really is really bad and that it is all due to the incompetence of the Gotham PD. One only had to look at that horrible spat of murders in the Park a few years back – small children was it not, Crane emphasized - and of course they had to lock up the person primarily responsible for catching the monster – "Committed to Arkham for assaulting moneyed, politically connected individuals actively engaged in the trade of rare and endangered plants, but that's Gotham for you."

"She was here last week for the opening of the show; nearly caused a stampede when she arrived. Beautiful creature brings to mind a renaissance painting of a fallen angel." - The man tells Crane in a hush conspiratorial tone, and Crane smiles back knowingly when told with a wink that she spent the evening ensconced in the arms of another woman. A tall woman, with dark hair and eyes but pale almost white skin.

Crane leaves an hour later, with the print wrapped up nicely in stiff brown paper under his arm; fully paid for in cash. He tells that wonderful man he won't have it any other way. Says he doesn't trust the banks and the man agrees. Cash really is best in these troubled times.

After that it was just a matter of settling down in his new favorite diner with a hot cup of coffee served just the way he liked it; in a paper cup, black, no creamer, no sugar, no trouble, and no fuss. And asking the lovely girl behind the counter (Hispanic, beautiful brown eyes with really nice smooth skin, says she's an actress/model waiting for her big break) the best way one should go about emailing old friends a small file attachment on a cell phone.

The miracle of modern technology to disturb, intrude, and distract is all so exciting to Crane, a brave new world indeed.

It had not been difficult for Crane to track down Isley's doctors; after all there were only so many people in Gotham qualified and stupid enough to deal with a certified psychopath of her statue and body count, all of whom could be counted on the fingers of one hand clapping.

It had also not been impossible to obtain details of the billing invoices. Crane shuddered to think what his cleaning staff had done behind his back for the most obtuse of reasons – a bottle of rye, or a brand new catcher's mitt for a child - when he was himself in private practice. He should have known his grandmother was right when she told him that hired help could never be trusted; the witch.

The invoices were paid via offshore bank accounts opened in the name of shell companies – which in of itself did not surprise Crane, he would have arranged the same - but more interestingly was the instruction that Isley's psychological evaluation reports be emailed once a week to specific email addresses.

The trail would normally have turned stone cold here; the domains and email addresses were setup remotely through a web hosting company and paid via more offshore accounts but for the fact that Crane decided to pay the network administrator a personal visit. Crane saw no shame in turning to a specialist for assistance in navigating the rocky road of the information highway. He came away with a bloody baseball bat, the email logs, a static IP address, and a greater appreciation for the power of prayer.

He also read Isley's evaluation reports and marveled that the only thing all three of the most expensive psychiatrists in Gotham could agree on was that Isley was an overly sexualized psychopath. Anyone who came into contact with Isley could have told them that for free.

After which it was all a matter of putting A and B together in the most appropriate manner with claw hammer, nail gun and wire cutter – It was fortunate that he was handy with tools, Crane reflected, with all this DIY business things could have gotten messy, and he hated mess - until he got a coherent description from a server technician of a woman in a wheelchair. A blonde woman with intense blue eyes in an apartment who lived surrounded by computers. Crane wondered if anyone maintained their own servers anymore, it was a shame that everything these days was outsourced.

Oracle tracked down the handset of course; he did not expect anything less. She even found out it belonged to a man who got himself quite badly scratched up – poor cry baby lost both his eyes, boo hoo hoo - in a scuffle with another customer in a diner a block down from Robinson Park; a hole in the way place dealing mostly in take away although their roast beef sandwich came highly recommended.

He wanted her to know exactly who she was dealing with, he was the Scarecrow not some 2 bit street thug. He could image the consternation his little gift would now be causing her. There would be no question that the recording was genuine; firstly it came from him and secondly while most injuries on Isley healed without a trace a broken neck was an exception - in fact, Crane thought, most people don't get up ever after having their necks snapped - they would have known from her MRI scans that she had at some point in her life suffered serious trauma to her vertebra.

Oracle would now be in position which was the social equivalent of catching your mutt mounting your crazy survivalist neighbor's prize winning Shih Tzu in front of a bus load of school children in broad daylight. That thought strangely seemed to cheer Crane up quite a bit. His week was turning out too dull for words. He was actually toying with the idea of showing up at the party he had been invited to later in the week; Crane believed it never hurt to expand one's social circle and he couldn't quite remember the last time he went out to a nice dinner and a movie. He was never the social butterfly the Batman made him out to be.

The question then was will she won't she take the bait, and swallow it hook line and sinker, or will she do the smart thing and destroy the clip and never speak of it again, but then she was a woman wasn't she, and that to Crane was a gem of an answer.

***

The call comes in early in the morning on the cell phone, Pamela remembers hearing it ringing and ringing in that special ring tone that meant she had to get dress because they were coming over. Like in Arkham, they did not like it if she went about unclothed. They speak in monotones, the low muffled sounds of a short abrupt unhappy conversation drifting across the room and as Pamela pulls her mink closer she feels a sudden ominous chill. She thinks there are a lot of things about her they do not like.

She's sunning herself in her special hot spot in the kitchen, her shoulders bare above her coat when they arrive. She hears them in the hallway, pausing at the door to quickly check on her before making their way upstairs to the safe room at the back. There is no greeting or explanation just the final certainty that she is excluded from their confidence. She is not one of them, never has been, and never will. And as they enter the room and quietly close the door behind them, she stands and walks out the kitchen, down the hallway and out the front into the sunny busy street and she keeps on walking.

*** Please leave a review. To be Continued

Dedicated to Harley-Cat and AZWoodbomb. Thanks for the heads up on the spelling.

PS:- If you're been following the series, there will be a delivery gap for the next chapter. I'm going away and won't be back until the end of the month. So if you don't hear from me for a while, fear not I haven't done a runner. I've just gone off to do some things but I'll be back to finish Crane's tale next month tops.

I've picked out 2 books to bring along for company, "The Price of Salt" Patricia Highsmith writing as Claire Morgan and "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" Wells Tower. "The Price of Salt" is one of those maddeningly rare bright sparks that comes out from Highsmith every now and then when she wasn't stuck in some alcoholic closet, and I look forward to getting reacquainted with a beautiful woman who drinks too much, smokes too much and has a thing for pretty barely legal young girls. "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" is a book recommendation from the guys at Amazon that looks promising. I thought about taking Alan Moore's "Voice of the Fire" along for the ride but its a difficult book to read. Prose is too beautiful, makes me want to go back and rewrite every dammed word I've ever written.

Anyway have a good month.


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